UKIP and NSDAP — curving in parallel?
[ by Charles Cameron — immigration, Brexit, and the killing of MP Jo Cox ]
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Two parties that don’t like immigration, and say so with similar propaganda images — but when the two images are juxtaposed, does the similarity between their two curving lines of unwanted immigrants, East German Jews in the aftermath of the first World War, largely Muslim Middle Eastern immigrants into Europe in the wake of the wars of our own time, make for fair comparison — or distorted propaganda?
The curves are indeed similar but that’s a graphical similarity, and there’s similarity in the dislike of immigrants too, in the meanings given to the two curves — but is the implicit comparison of Farrage with Hitler a fair one, or excessive?
How do we read juxtapositions of this sort? How do we critique them? Is interpretation at the mercy of the “eye of the beholder”? What can this specific example teach us about DoubleQuotes in general, and their potential for use in revelation and / or deception?
Source:
The Independent, People are calling out Ukip’s new anti-EU poster for resembling ‘outright Nazi propaganda’
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With the Brexit referendum about a week away, and with the widely admired British Labour MP Jo Cox murdered today by a killer with Neo-Nazi affiliation, the UK has its own terrorism, fury, divisions and grief to come to grips with.
Source:
The Telegraph, My fearless friend Jo Cox, a five-foot bundle of Yorkshire grit
June 17th, 2016 at 3:36 pm
Farage always struck me as all foam and no beer, but what a blunder this is. I skimmed that BBC documentary, and sure enough that image comes up at exactly 24 minutes in. All those photos of Muslim refugees walking into Europe were taken and published by sympathetic journalists and publications. I’m sure they are intentionally shaped and fashioned to resemble past images of strife and peril. To try to use one for campaigning the opposite point is the height of folly. Utterly stupid.
While the Left is busy with ‘the engineering of consent’ (to quote another classic BBC documentary), the UKIP can only muster buffoonery.
I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m still amazed at the amateurishness. This is why Farage will always stay on the fringe.
June 18th, 2016 at 4:55 am
The killer of Jo Cox MP has an extremely similar profile to the shooter of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (and killer of 9 others) in Tucson. They were both mentally ill persons who had been in treatment for long periods of time. Both obsessively consumed propaganda of groups highly alienated from the daily life and worldview of the developed work. Cox’s killer consumed white nationalist identity politics propaganda similar to National Socialist racial theories, while the Tucson shooter consumed propaganda of Deep Green neo-primitivist groups similar to National Socialist critiques of “alienating” contemporary industrial society. Neither were coherent or sane enough to actually be functional members of the groups whose propaganda they consumed. Question: Why is Cox’s killer identified as a “Neo-Nazi” while Ciffords’ shooter is never referred to as a Green extremist? He’s just a “disturbed individual” with no affiliation.
June 18th, 2016 at 7:50 pm
Hi James:
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I think the label “Neo-Nazi” conveys a lot more than the label “Green extremist” does, largely because we have the whole of WWII to tell us about Nazis. Of course, there may be other (ideologically preferential) factors, but I’m betting that’s a big part of it.